By
Chimamanda U. Martha
November 23rd, 2023
Here’re the key highlights from this week’s two payment technology conferences – Sibos 2017 by SWIFT and Swell 2017 by Ripple.
This week, Toronto is hosting two major payment technology conferences – Ripple’s Swell conference and the Sibos 2017 conference by international payments platform ‘SWIFT’. Some of the very noted dignitaries from the world of finance were present at both the events talking about the latest blockchain technology revolution and how it could shape the future economic trends.
Bernanke is Bullish on Blockchain But Skeptical About Bitcoin
Ben Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was present at the Ripple’s Swell conference to address a crowd of several hundred attendees. While on stage, Bernanke acknowledged the fact that the traditional banking systems have payment methods which are not only slow in nature but also expensive. He also outlined and highlighted the existing complicated process of making cross-border payments.
Bernanke said that with a huge increase in global transactions over the past decade, it is important to address the underlying payments issue and how the ‘blockchain technology’ is at the heart of solving such problems by providing a viable solution. “It’s an obvious area where new technologies like blockchain or these electronic currencies can be used to improve the process.”
While being at the Ripple’s own Swell conference, Bernanke was direct to address Ripple and said that he has heard about the company’s pertinent efforts in payment systems to improve accuracy, reduce costs, and bring speed and reliability in the overall process.
In a Question-Answer session, Bernanke was asked his opinion more on cryptocurrency and blockchain during which he said “bitcoin is meant to be an attempt to replace fiat currencies and evade government regulation and government intervention. I don’t think that’s going to be a success. When bitcoin becomes a threat they’ll take whatever action deemed necessary to quash it.”
Bernanke also said that because of the highly speculative and volatile nature of Bitcoin it has been not able to establish itself as a real transactional currency.
Bernanke believes that blockchain startups and business that work in tandem with the government agencies are more likely to gain momentum. Central Banks from across the world as optimistically looking forward to developing and implementing blockchain-based technology solutions to create more efficient payment systems.
Recently, IBM along with KlickEx and Stellar is working on a similar project for secured, fast and low-cost cross-border payments.
Swift CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt Talked About Future Plans
SWIFT, who hosts the Sibos Conference and a Ripple rival, is a messaging platform connecting world’s banks through a centralised ledger system, had its major focus over the underlying inadequacies that still exist in the cryptocurrency market.
In response to Ripple’s decentralised blockchain solution that aims at integrating banks, Swift has developed its own global payments innovation program that comprises of a gamut of services which are aimed at improving the overall customer experience by improvising factors like predictability, transparency and speed of cross-border payments.
Last year, after the major hack of whopping $81 million at the Bangladesh bank, Swift was soon pushed into action to introduce a range of security measures like real-time payments services making it difficult for hackers breach into the system and steal money from any of the member banks.
CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt expressed confidence in this regard and said that his team at Swift has been diligently working to manage cyber threats and called this as a “manageable nuisance”.